It lay there, the bed,
quiet, like a dead patient,
busy bodies breezing past.
On it had collapsed
a wrinkled shroud,
rather blue,
like a relative in
a mid-lament swoon.
When the doctor
taller than her big name
stretched a gloved hand
for an internal,
I spotted it
in the folds -
an abnormal twirl
of single black hair cut off,
perhaps of a pregnant girl
previously there.
She by now may have
delivered in the gen. ward.
